David Liss - The Ethical Assassin

Melford shook his head. “For the most part, no. The principal arm of the movement is a loose affiliation of activists collectively known as the Animal Liberation Front. The thing that makes it work so well is that to be a member of this group, all you have to do is espouse its values, take action, and attribute that action to the ALF. No training camp, no indoctrination, no oath of loyalty. On a small scale, they generally vandalize fast-food restaurants or hunting shops, anything to throw a monkey wrench, even a tiny one, into the machinery of animal misery. But more sophisticated operations involve things like rescuing lab animals or breaking into research or farming facilities to take pictures and expose their cruelty.”

“I don’t know,” Desiree said. “It sounds sort of weak. Do you really want to dedicate your life to pestering people to stop doing what they’re never going to stop doing anyway? Maybe you should take stronger action. Beat up some fast-food executives or something.”

“The ALF believes that its people must never harm anyone, not even the cruelest of animal tormentors, since their core belief is that human beings can live their lives without harming any creatures.”

I tried not to react when I heard this.

“They can’t take down someone really nasty?” Desiree asked.

Melford shook his head. “Anyone who would do that, who would even be suspected of thinking about that sort of thing, would be shunned by the organization and the entire animal rights movement. They’re all about saving lives, even human lives. Though property is always a legitimate target.”

“I respect that,” she said.

“There are those, however,” Melford went on, “who take action when the ALF won’t, who believe that violence is, under extreme circumstances, a necessary evil. The core of the animal rights movement never condone this sort of thing, not even in private, I suspect.”

“That sounds about right to me,” Desiree said. “It doesn’t make any sense to support the idea of protecting the rights of all beings if you then start picking and choosing. Otherwise, we’re all like people in a restaurant, picking from the tank which fish we want to eat.”

Melford smiled. “That’s right.”

Desiree smiled at this lie, as if she were so happy to have Melford’s approval. The crazy thing was, I knew how she felt. And I knew he was lying to her. So what did that say about the ease with which I’d come to value his opinion? If I didn’t know from personal experience, the personal experience of seeing him kill two people, I would never suspect he was lying. I suddenly felt distinctly uneasy, like I wanted to get out of the car. Like I wanted to get away.

“Can I ask a question?” Desiree said.

“Of course.”

“What about medical research? I mean, it may be unpleasant to use animals as test subjects, but we get results. And isn’t it important to find cures for diseases?”

“Absolutely it’s important to find cures for diseases,” Melford agreed, “but using animals to do so is another matter. Look, there are two aspects to the answer- one ethical and the other practical. The ethical issue is that it may be expedient to torment and kill animals for our needs, but is it the right thing to do? If we could get better results by using prisoners or unwanted children or unlucky bastards picked by lottery, would that be okay? In other words, do the ends justify the means? Either the lives of animals are to be valued or they’re not, and if they are, then making exceptions because something is really, really important doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m not sure I buy it,” she said. “They’re animals, not people. Shouldn’t we have the right to take advantage of our position on the food chain? We don’t judge lions for eating zebras.”

“Lions can’t choose not to eat zebras,” Melford said. “It’s not ethics for them. It’s what they’re designed to do. We can choose whether or not to harm animals, so we can be judged by that choice.”

“Okay, I accept that,” she told him. “But I don’t know that I accept that we should die of diseases rather than use animals to help us overcome them.”

“That’s a tough one. It may be the toughest one for people to get past. The ethical person can sacrifice hot dogs and hamburgers, but the question of animal testing seems to provide a real dilemma. So here’s something to keep in mind: Most animal testing is utterly worthless.”

“Come on,” I chimed in. “Why would they do it if it was worthless?”

“Don’t fool yourself. Medical labs may be full of well-meaning researchers, but they need funding to do their work. Researchers have to apply for grants, and grant proposals have to be written so that they are successful. And to get grants, researchers have to use animal research- it’s just that simple. Grant providers have come to believe in the efficacy of animal research, and no amount of scientific fact is going to sway them.”

“Maybe they believe in it because it works,” Desiree suggested.

“Most of the animals they use for research are mammals and are closely related to us, but that doesn’t mean they respond to diseases or to drugs the same way we do. Chimps are our closest relatives. They’re more closely related to us than they are to gorillas, but you know what happens if you give a chimp PCP- angel dust? It goes to sleep. PCP makes a great chimp tranquilizer. Think about that. A drug that turns us into monsters makes them sleepy, and they’re the nearest thing to humans out there. So if a drug works or doesn’t work on a chimp or a rat or a dog, what does that tell us about how it will go on humans? Ultimately, it tells us nothing.”

“Haven’t there been lots of breakthroughs that have come through animal research?”

“And there will probably be many more. That doesn’t mean it’s the best way to go. Advocates of medical research ask if we’d rather live without the polio vaccine, since the polio vaccine would never have come about if there had been no animal research. It’s a false argument. Sure, we’re better off with a polio vaccine than without one, but human beings are clever and resourceful. There are alternatives, including using volunteers and lab tests. Some scientists are even beginning to work with models built entirely from computer software. To say that we would never be where we are without animal research is to assume that research would close down without animals. Of course it wouldn’t. We’d find new ways. Necessity is the mother of invention, so if we outlawed animal testing, we might have more advanced computers now because we’d need more sophisticated computer models to save lives. And because animal research is so unreliable, the better question to ask would be what we might have discovered if we didn’t rely on it. The defenders of vivisection like to suggest that it’s a choice between animals and disease or testing and cures, but what if just the opposite is true, and using unreliable biological models has set back medical science? Maybe without animal testing we’d have a cure for cancer by now.”

“I don’t know,” Desiree said absently. “You make a good case, but if I’m sick, I want them to do everything possible to cure me.”

“You want them to do everything possible, but not anything conceivable, whether it benefits you or not.”

“True.”

“And, as an ethical person, even if you want to allow for animal testing, don’t you think there should be some sort of standard of need? Maybe a tester should have to make a case for why it is necessary to sacrifice a monkey or a dog or a rat for a particular cause. Right now they are free to slaughter and torture however many thousands they like without oversight.

“And you know there’s a whole lot of animal testing that has nothing to do with health. Cosmetic companies subject millions of animals a year to torture to see if this new and improved nail polish remover does as much damage to a rabbit’s eyes as the old version. You’d think it would be enough to know that putting corrosive material in your eyes is a bad move, but these guys need to test it out.”